WHY SPELL CHECK DOES NOT WORK--A LINGUISTIC ODYSSEY
Thanks to M. Zarnosky: bruinvt.edu Thu Feb 23 08:08:05 1995
)
) From IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems, Vol. 26, No. 2,
) March, 1990 -- p. 209, author name n.a. --
)
) "Catching Misspilled Words with Spilling Checker
) "As an extra addled service, I am going to put this column in the
) Spilling Checker, where I tryst it will sale through with flying colons.
) In this modern ear, it is simply inexplicable to ask readers to expose
) themselves to misspelled swords when they have bitter things to do.
) "And with all the other timesaving features on my new work processor, it is
) in realty very easy to pit together a colon like this one and get it tight.
) For instants, if there is a work that is wrong, I just put the curse on it,
) press Delete and its Well sometimes it deletes to the end of the
) lion or worst yet the whole rage. Four bigger problems, there is the Cat
) and Paste option. If there is some test that is somewhere were you wish it
) where somewhere else you jest put the curse
) at both ends and wash it dissapear.
) Where you want it to reappear simply bring four quarts of water to a
) rotting boil and throw in 112 pounds of dazed chicken. Sometimes it brings
) in the Cat that was Pasted yesterday.
) "But usually it comes out as you planned, or better. And if it doesn't,
) there are lots of other easy to lose options..."
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Alan C. Harris, Ph. D. TELNOS: main off: 818-885-2853
Professor, Communication/Linguistics direct off: 818-885-2874
Speech Communication Department
California State University, Northridge home: 818-366-3165
SPCH CSUN FAX: 818-885-2663
Northridge, CA 91330-8257 Internet email: AHARRISHUEY.CSUN.EDU
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>From William_F_EADIEumail.umd.edu Tue Mar 7 12:47:36 1995
Date Tue, 07 Mar 95 12:17 EST
>From we14 (William_F_EADIEumail.umd.edu)
thanks to Bill Eadie:
(forwarded by Lawrence Rosenfeld)
) WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE ROAD?
) Plato:
) For the greater good.
) Karl Marx:
) It was a historical inevitability.
) Machiavelli:
) So that its subjects will view it with admiration, as a chicken
) which has the daring and courage to boldly cross the road, but
) also with fear, for whom among them has the strength to contend
) with such a paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the
) princely chicken's dominion maintained.
) Hippocrates:
) Because of an excess of light pink gooey stuff in its pancreas.
) Jacques Derrida:
) Any number of contending discourses may be discovered within the
) act of the chicken crossing the road, and each interpretation is
) equally valid as the authorial intent can never be discerned,
) because structuralism is DEAD, DAMMIT, DEAD!
) Thomas de Torquemada:
) Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I'll find out.
) Timothy Leary:
) Because that's the only kind of trip the Establishment would
) let it take.
) Douglas Adams:
) Forty-two.
) Nietzsche:
) Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road gazes
) also across you.
) Oliver North:
) National Security was at stake.
) B.F. Skinner:
) Because the external influences which had pervaded its sensorium
) from birth had caused it to develop in such a fashion that it
) would tend to cross roads, even while believing these actions to
) be of its own free will.
) Carl Jung:
) The confluence of events in the cultural gestalt necessitated that
) individual chickens cross roads at this historical juncture, and
) therefore synchronicitously brought such occurrences into being.
) Jean-Paul Sartre:
) In order to act in good faith and be true to itself, the
) chicken found it necessary to cross the road.
) Ludwig Wittgenstein:
) The possibility of "crossing" was encoded into the objects
) "chicken" and "road", and circumstances came into being which
) caused the actualization of this potential occurrence.
) Albert Einstein:
) Whether the chicken crossed the road or the road crossed the
) chicken depends upon your frame of reference.
) Aristotle:
) To actualize its potential.
) Buddha:
) If you ask this question, you deny your own chicken-nature.
) Howard Cosell:
) It may very well have been one of the most astonishing events to
) grace the annals of history. An historic, unprecedented avian
) biped with the temerity to attempt such an herculean achievement
) formerly relegated to homo sapien pedestrians is truly a
) remarkable occurence.
) Salvador Dali:
) The Fish.
) Darwin:
) It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.
) Emily Dickinson:
) Because it could not stop for death.
) Epicurus:
) For fun.
) Ralph Waldo Emerson:
) It didn't cross the road; it transcended it.
) Johann Friedrich von Goethe:
) The eternal hen-principle made it do it.
) Ernest Hemingway:
) To die. In the rain.
) Werner Heisenberg:
) We are not sure which side of the road the chicken was on, but it
) was moving very fast.
) David Hume:
) Out of custom and habit.
) Saddam Hussein:
) This was an unprovoked act of rebellion and we were quite
) justified in dropping 50 tons of nerve gas on it.
) Jack Nicholson:
) 'Cause it (censored) wanted to. That's the (censored) reason.
) Pyrrho the Skeptic:
) What road?
) Ronald Reagan:
) I forget.
) John Sununu:
) The Air Force was only too happy to provide the transportation,
) so quite understandably the chicken availed himself of the
) opportunity.
) The Sphinx:
) You tell me.
) Henry David Thoreau:
) To live deliberately ... and suck all the marrow out of life.
) Mark Twain:
) The news of its crossing has been greatly exaggerated.
) ========================================================
===============================================================
Alan C. Harris, Ph. D. TELNOS: main off: 818-885-2853
Professor, Communication/Linguistics direct off: 818-885-2874
Speech Communication Department
California State University, Northridge home: 818-366-3165
SPCH CSUN FAX: 818-885-2663
Northridge, CA 91330-8257 Internet email: AHARRISHUEY.CSUN.EDU
===============================================================

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Prompted by Bob Fadkin's request for linguistic songs, I thought linguist
listers might be amused by the following ditty which I penned a few years
ago.
THE LAMENT OF THE NULL ANAPHOR (to the tune of 'Beautiful Dreamer)
Like the birds in the air, I long to be free.
How I long to be licensed by Principle C,
To be nested somewhere on a branch of a tree,
Where no coindexed item can c-command me.
I'm properly governed, but not realised.
I can't be conjoined or get cliticised
And I can't block contractions across my domain
And I'm locally bound in an Argument Chain.
Now my antecedent's a capital PRO,
She could not be governed, so she had to go.
She escaped from her sentence, though she had no Case
And she left me behind as a mere NP trace.
And now once again she's gone off on a spree
To widen her Scope from the Spec of CP,
Her trace can't command me, but there's my mishap,
For now I've become a Parasitic Gap.
(I know the derivation doesn't work out exactly, but then 'Barriers' doesn't
scan!)
Mike Jones,
Dept of Language and Linguistics,
University of Essex,
Colchester, UK.